If you knew there were several healthy habits you could adopt right now to help lower your chances of suffering from depression, wouldn’t you be curious to know about them? According to recent research, even if your DNA makes you more susceptible to depression, you can make choices in everyday life to make developing depression far less likely. Knowing you have some control over this mental health condition is an extremely empowering thing.
Study Investigates the Link Between Modifiable Lifestyle Factors and Depression Risk
In a 2023 study published in Nature Mental Health, researchers from Fudan University in Shanghai and Cambridge University in England looked for the association between participants’ depression risk and seven specific modifiable lifestyle factors: alcohol consumption, diet, physical activity, sleep, smoking, sedentary behavior, and social connection.
Over the course of nine years, they analyzed the U.K. Biobank health data of over 280,000 adults (average age of 58), hoping to pinpoint which healthy lifestyle behaviors—and, even further, whether a combination of these behaviors—were most associated with reduced depression risk.
Ultimately, they concluded: “[W]e found that a healthy lifestyle decreased the risk of depression across a population with varied genetic risk….Together, our findings suggest that adherence to a healthy lifestyle could aid in the prevention of depression.”
The Top Lifestyle Factors Associated With Reduced Risk of Depression
Individually, each healthy habit provided its own “significant” protection against depression.
- Getting seven to nine hours of sleep per night decreased risk by 22 percent
- Not smoking, 20 percent
- Socializing frequently and regularly, 18 per cent
- regular exercise and physical activity, according to World Health Organization guidelines, 14 percent, 14 percent
- Not being sedentary, 13 per cent
- Drinking, at most, small to moderate levels of alcohol, 11 per cent
- Practicing healthy eating and nutrition habits (according to the U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans), 6 percent
But when combined, the chances seemed to be even better. Subjects were each given a score from 0 to 7, based on how many of factors their life included, and categorized into three groups: those with an “unfavorable lifestyle” (score of 0 to 1), an “intermediate lifestyle” (score of 2 to 4), and an “favorable lifestyle” (score of 5 to 7).
Unsurprisingly, adhering to more behaviors seemed to have compounding benefits for reducing depression risk. Compared with the unfavorable lifestyle group, an intermediate lifestyle (following two to four of these healthy habits) was associated with a 41 percent lower risk of depression, and a healthy lifestyle (consisting of five to seven habits) was associated with an impressive 57 percent lower risk of depression.
The researchers also evaluated a subset of participants’ brain scans, noting that the brains of the healthy lifestyle group showed important structural markers relating to depression, including a “larger volume of the orbitofrontal cortex and the medial prefrontal cortex, which might suggest improved cognitive control and emotion regulation.” They explain further in the study article that sufficient, consistent, good-quality sleep “promotes synaptic plasticity mechanisms in the hippocampus that optimize emotional responses to future behavioral stressors.”
While depression is a complex mental health condition that can be linked to any number of coinciding causes and risk factors, knowing that certain behaviors within our control can provide another defense against it is an important step. And it’s even stronger motivation to go for a walk, get to bed on time, avoid binge drinking, and eat your veggies.